Welcome to the Hog Blog, a blog chronicling minor-league baseball in the Lehigh Valley. Tom Housenick, The Morning Call's IronPigs beat writer, has been at The Morning Call since 2008. In a previous lifetime, he was at Lackawanna County Stadium in Moosic talking with future Phillies Jimmy Rollins, Pat Burrell, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard, among many others.
He’ll now be spending his summers in search of who the Phillies are hoping to be the next Chase Utley and Cole Hamels plus any outfielder who catch and hit. What he really hopes to find are the next Mariano Rivera, Todd Helton and Jim Thome --- great human beings who happened to be great at this sport.
He spent the last five years covering Colonial League football, college basketball and high school track & field.

With one team waiting to see who it would play in the first round of the Governors' Cup playoffs, and with the players on the other simply passing the time until they either headed home or, in the case of a fortunate few, got to wear a major league uniform for the last three weeks of the season, nobody was really focused on who won or even what happened in game No. 144 of the IronPigs' sixth season.

But there were a few numbers and notes to come from Monday's season finale, a 4-0 loss to Pawtucket at Coca-Cola Park.

* Tyler Henson's second-inning steal was the IronPigs' 140th of the season, extending the franchise record they passed weeks ago (120 by the 2011 squad). But it was also the first time a Phillies Triple-A affiliate reached that level since the 1983 Portland Beavers, with Juan Samuel (33) one of three players with 30 or more steals, swiped 169.

It's also the fifth-most ever by a Phillies affiliate and the most by one in the International League.

The leaders:

1981 Oklahoma City, 171 (Bob Dernier 72, Ryne Sandberg 32)

1983 Portland, 169 (Juan Samuel, 33)

1972 Oklahoma City, 161 (Lonnie Smith, 46)

1978 Oklahoma City, 144 (Lonnie Smith, 66).

The most by an International League affiliate had been 139 by the 2000 Scranton Red Barons, led by 24 each from Jimmy Rollins and Marlon Anderson.

* The IronPigs had just two hits Sunday, singles by Hanson and Leandro Castro. That cost them the chance to become the first Phillies affiliate team since the 2005 Red Barons to lead the International League in hitting. Lehigh Valley wound up the season hitting .26702 (1,274-for-4,771).

Durham, which had 12 hits Sunday in a 1-0, 10-inning win at Norfolk that knocked the Tides out of the playoffs, finishehd at .26709 (1,285-for-4,811).

For the record, the IronPigs would've batted .26718 with one more hit Sunday, pushing them ahead of the Bulls.

* With a 72-72 record, the IronPigs finished with a non-losing season for the third straight year. That's only the fourth time a Phillies Triple-A affiliate managed to do that in as many as three straight seasons. The others:

1999-2003 Scranton Red Barons (5)

1979-81 Oklahoma City 89ers (3)

1967-69 San Diego Padres (67-68) and Eugene Emeralds (3)

* The IronPigs didn't lead the minors in attendance for the fourth straight season but extend their minor league-leading streak of drawing at least 600,000 to six seasons. Sunday's crowd of 9,005 set the final total at 613,075, third-most in the league behind Indianapolis (637,579) and Columbus (635,613).

The IronPigs did finish with an average over 9,000 for the fifth straight season (9,016). That was second to Columbus (9,212) and ahead of Indianapolis (8,980), which lost just one of its 72 home dates to inclement weather.

Lehigh Valley lost four dates to rain, and Columbus three. Buffalo lost the most home dates (six), and somewhat surprisingly, Toledo was the only IL team not to have a home postponement this year.

Monday was also an example of why the IronPigs attendance dipped slightly (1.5 percent) this year from last year's average of 9,153. Although the game was played in near-perfect weather in the afternoon, morning rains took a bite out of the walk-up sales, something that Landes and his organization dealt with far too many times during the season.

The Clippers and the IronPigs were the only minor league teams to top 9,000 in average attendance. Sacramento led the Pacific Coast League with an average of 8,435.

* Cesar Hernandez finished third in the International League batting race with a .309 average, the highest finish by an IronPig in their six-year history. Rochester's Chris Collabello, the first player to sweep the league's MVP and rookie of the year award since J.T. Snow in 1992, led the league with a .352 average.

Cody Asche hit .295 to finish ninth, the second time two IronPigs finished in the top 10. Mike Cervenak (.311) and Brandon Watson (.305) finished fifth and eighth, respectively, in 2008.

* Cody Overbeck struck out 140 times, topping Brandon Moss' franchise record of 127 and the fourth-highest ever by a Phillies Triple-A hitter. Greg Luzinski set the record with 167 at Eugene in 1971; Mike Schmidt struck out 145 times for the Emeralds a year later to match the total of Luzinski's teammate Craig Robinson a year earlier.

* The playoff match-ups are set to see who will make it to the Triple-A Championship Game on Sept. 17 at Coca-Cola Park.

In the International League, Rochester grabbed the wild card spot by beating Scranton 12-3 (the Red Wings scored nine runs in the first inning and coasted from there) while Norfolk was losing to Durham. Rochester and Durham tied at 77-67 but the Red Wings owned a 6-2 head-to-head advantage.

Rochester will host Pawtucket (80-63) Wednesday night while Indianapolis (80-64) goes to Durham (87-57) in the opening games of their best-of-five semifinals.

By the way, Rochester reached the playoffs after starting the season 2-11 and 20-30. The Red Wings also limp into the playoffs with just three wins in their 11 games which enabled Pawtucket to catch them for the North Division title.

As for the PawSox, they were seemingly well on their way with a 50-29 record and a 9 1/2 game division lead, then were basically written off after losing 40 of their next 51. But Pawtucket won 17 of its last 21 games to earn the chance to repeat as Governors' Cup champions.

Out west, Omaha slipped into the Pacific Coast League playoffs with a losing record (70-74), winning the PCL American North by beating Round Rock 8-4 Monday while Memphis (69-75) was losing to Oklahoma City 2-1. The Storm Chasers will travel to American South champion Oklahoma City (82-62) Wednesday to open the semifinals.

In the PCL Pacific, South champ Las Vegas (81-63) travels to North champ Salt Like (78-66) to open their semifinals.

The league champions will eentually meet here in Allentown.

* Charlotte played its final game at Knights Stadium in Fort Mill, S.C., Monday, beating Gwinnett 4-0 before 6,894. The Knights, who finished last in the IL in average attendance (3,803), will move into a downtown Charlotte park next season, returning to the city for the first time in 25 years.

* Scranton averaged 6,409 in its first season at new PNC Field to finish ninth in average attendance. The team spent the entire 2012 seson on the road while their home park underwent a massive renovation project.

That's the RailRiders highest total since they averaged 8,802 in their first season as a Yankees affiliate in 2007, finishing fourth. That number nose-dived each season after that until it bottomed out at 4,586 per game in 2011, ahead of only Charlotte in the 14-team league.